Read this book and you will view things a bit differently on your next drive. As you effortlessly drive across a bridge over a river at 65 MPH, your thoughts may well travel back to Captain Marcy's advice on how to cross a river with wagons pulled by mule-team.This book is essential to any author, movie director or Living Historian who wants to "get it right". THE PRAIRIE TRAVELER is chock-full of information about overland travel in the mid-19th century, and covers almost any possible, practical, useful subject related to wilderness travel. Although it is written in 1850's American English, it is actually a fairly easy read with very little "culture shock".For those of you with the cerebral agility to remove the mental straight-jacket of "Political Correctness", THE PRAIRIE TRAVELER will accurately picture the Frontier society as it existed at the time. It was a very good society in most ways, with the limitations that 19th century people were born into and educated with. Those pioneers did advance themselves, bit-by-bit, away from the limitations they were born into, and the result is the 21st Century America we live in today. We stand on their shoulders, advanced as far as we are today, because of the small advances they made in their generation.A 21st century man condemning a 19th century man for being the product of his times reflects the mental and educational limitations of the 21st century man.